Yes

Minimum wage and living wage should be identical. Nobody should have to work on a wage than cannot support a basic standard of living.

family income provides children with basic needs, developmentally appropriate stimulation, high-quality health and child care, and access to educational and cultural opportunities. if everyone put some money into helping their families, there would be an equal chance for everyone in living a better life.

People need to be able to pay for their basic expenses and not have to cut down on them, which so many minimum wage workers are having to do now

I know myself from making that bit extra money if makes a huge difference to your finances what you can afford and thus reduces stress and helps improve mental health.

The 16 year old minimum wage will soon become £6.40 which I see as fair for GSCE or early college students. It is soon to be £11.44 for 21+ year olds. However, using 9-5 mon-fri (40 hours), they would earn £1830.40 a month, only just enough to cover rent after tax. Factoring other average expenses, they would hardly have anything left. People would only just get by despite working 40 hours.

Everyone needs to be able to pay basic expenses and not have to cut down on their basic expenses, which some minimum wage workers are having to do at the moment.

If the minimum wage is raised so will all the prices in retailers or other companies which they employ people at minimum wage. People have the ability to work as hard as they want to get their own desired paycheck companies and the government should not have to help them out at the expense of everyone else. Also, most people working at the minimum wage are still living with their parents and do not have many major paychecks or bills to fulfill.

If all jobs are at a good wage it will stop people from progressing, working hard and being innovative

Putting minimum wages up only increases the pool of people on minimum wage. It creates a bigger divide between the rich and poor. That means that instead of many people on a staggered wage, most of the population are competing for resources where the prices are increasing. Increasing the minimum wage is like putting a plaster on a broken leg and instead the government should fix the economic problem of crashing wages instead of hiding it behind the increase of house prices.

The minimum wage is already too high putting a lot of strain on small businesses and it means that their is less of a gap to experienced employees.

Each time the minimum wage is increased businesses need to cover this. To do so customers get charged more through costs of goods and services increasing. The business or the customer can not afford to cover these new costs leading to redundancy.

Destroys fair competition market, small companies will never be able to complete with larger companies or even get their business off the ground

You will create a much higher standard of living needlessly without encouraging citizens to live within their means

increasing minimum wage affects small businesses and benefits large ones who can survive the increases (e.g. amazon etc)

The higher the wages, the higher the prices of goods to pay for the wages (the ones on lower income will be the ones suffering the most because of this)

Being a small cleaning business that can only charge the client so much, a constant raise of the minimum wage will price me out the market and put myself and my staff ( 12) out of work!

Companies who have to pay their workers more have to charge more for their services or products, therefore increasing prices for everyone regardless of their income.

Higher wages means higher costs. Minimum wage rises by 20% but most salaries only raise by 3% so those who worked darn hard to earn more are disadvantaged over unskilled and unambitious

Small business can't always afford the rate that is now extremely high! If somone is happy to work for less, they should be able to.

In an already crumbling economy, raising the minimum wage will only raise costs and increase inflation

By continuing to increase the minimum wage, small businesses can no longer afford to recruit staff therefore placing more people on benefits. The rises over the previous 2 years have been extremely high.

If an employee is willing to work for the rate that an employer is willing to pay then this is the best balance and it is clearly the ‘going rate’ for the job. Otherwise the employer is going to have to raise the costs of the service / product that they provide -penalising everyone.

The cost of living has risen more than the minimum wage so there are people working who need to access benefits and things like food banks. Working people should be able to provide for their families

Higher wages cause businesses to raise prices effectively cancelling out the process. Focus on lowing cost of supplies etc and better economic spending to enable businesses to turn more profit and pay staff higher wages in turn.

Cost of living crisis along with rising rents in London mean that the minimum wage must be increased so that people can afford to live

Wages have risen naturally on their own to be twice as much on average then a minimum increase has without the need for government regulation.

Many people may be willing to work for less than the minimum wage so there is no need to make UK businesses less competitive than overseas businesses

Not all jobs deserve a higher wage some are learning positions to set you up with future skills. Also a higher minimum wage has shown to reduce the jobs available in certain sectors

lots of peole waste their money on unecissery things such as holidays. cutting the minimum wage will decrease the number of people wasting their money

Minimum wage exacerbates unemployment during economic downturns, creates structural unemployment when those living on minimum wage cannot adjust to the job market when the economy inevitably improves and removes jobs at the lower end.

Costs have to be affordable for SME's as well as big business and the NMW is already stretching for them.

£11 per hour is plenty. Unless when you increase the minimum wage you increase the wages of the whole country especially those who work in the NHS.

When raising minimum wage, the companies pass on extra labour costs onto the consumer which decreases disposable income

Upping minimum wage increaes inflation. Likewise, can potential lead to job losses due to limited capital to pay wages per hour.

Raises costs for businesses thus raising prices and inflation as well as making uk exports less competitive - harming economy

Countries in Scandinavia without a min wage pay very highly. Would have to look into why and relate this to the uk.

Whilst everyone should get reasonable wage, shlkilled workers wages are only a little above this. Therefore there is no incentive to achieve this

Minimum wage results in a strain on small businesses often forcing them to reduce staff numbers to compensate the increased cost. But it also drives up inflation as prices rise to compensate the costs of higher Minimum wages.

If you continually increase MW, you feed into inflation therefore price increases become a never ending circle.

Higher wages cause inflation, prices rise, VAT & PAYE contributions increase. Sold as a benefit to workers but is a money maker for HMRC.

It will put companies in even more strain and cause us to raise our prices further which will mean less business and in turn less staff

It will devalue those in higher paid, more skilled positions. Minimum wage jobs are supposed to be for unskilled workers while they develop and should act as an incentive to continue to improve their earning potential. As minimum wage increases, fewer people would then be willing to do higher positions unless they were paid more and it leads to never ending price increases and inflation.

I do however believe there is an increasing disparity between the rich and poor so would want this gap to be bridged somehow.

Raising the floor of income for low-skilled jobs disincentivises high-skilled training, and so reduces the number of top innovators and academics within the country.

It stops companies and organisations to offer better pay conditions to attract workers to rural areas

Increasing minimum wage increases prices and causes wage compression, driving up costs for business and ultimately costing jobs

It creates unemployment and was originally a tool of white racists who didn’t want to compete with black/Chinese labour. Singapore proves you don’t need a minimum wage law at all.

The more it goes up the more middle/higher wages need to go up to keep a wage gap to incentivise people to work hard and progress throughout there career also if minimum wage pays better than some skilled job you will lose skilled people to Amazon warehouses

It causes more inflation due to the wage price spiral and doesn’t allow low skilled people to get a job and instead just sat at home collecting tax payers money

Everyone needs to be able to pay basic expenses and not have to cut down on their basic expenses, which some minimum wage workers are having to do at the moment.

All other wages don’t increase at the same rate, so semi skilled workers lose out. If someone is earning £12p/h then their wage doesn’t and won’t have increased for some time.

Increasing minimum wage increases prices for every one else. also making the wealth gap too close just reduces the incentive to do more difficult jobs

Petrol prices have increased due to the decrease in renewable energy resources and minimum wages have stuck to the same. How do they expect people who are already struggling to cope and look after themselves. This then cause a chain reaction as they will eat cheaper foods which is bad for their health and they end up using up most of the nhs time.

increasing minimum wage increases prices for every one else. also making the wealth gap too close just reduces the incentive to do more difficult jobs

Governmetn regulation has always failed the public and has shown to be detrimental to workers wages and experice.

It is demonstrable that some people have skills sets below the market rate for minimum wage. These people will simply lose employment.

The minimum wage is, and always will be £0.00 per hour.

Many people working low income jobs are simply realising the consequences of their failures in school. It is not fair on those who are more talented and intelligent to have their salaries compromised as a result of overpaying people who are little more than incompetent.

If people have more money, demand will be higher and supply will not be enough to satisfy consumers so inflation will happen, meaning no one is better off, as they're working time is still the same value relative to the price of goods.

It prevents small, single person businesses growing because the jump from one self employed to a small team is huge - many self employed business owners earn less than minimum wage, how is it expected they position themselves to pay someone, less invested in the business, likely working less hours, generating less income, more and increasing amounts of money? Scalability becomes impossible due to Price's Law and a vast majority of small businesses fail for this reason impacting development in certain sectors including retail environments directly contributing to empty retail units. Small businesses are in a catch 22 of needing to generate large profits to start employing even at the current minimum wage but can't generate without large investment and risk, or staff which they cant afford until the threshold is met.

My Above Stipulation is more then generous to Employer in a environment where there are more jobs then employers Otherwise Stupidity prevails.

I creasing the minimum wage increases the risk for everything and the opportunity to recruit lower paid jobs to support a family or business makes it unrealistic. It also reduces job opportunities as companies looka to make more robust and efficient ways of working and reduce the high paid but lower skilled roles. This is sure if worse for the economy. Eventually nobody will work at McDonald's and it will be all automated as the cot to hire staff will cost more than the food itself.